The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this disclosure and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Computing devices often communicate with peripheral devices or other computing devices via a wireless medium to exchange data or obtain services. To do so, computing devices often join or form a wireless network on a particular channel of the wireless medium in order to facilitate access of data or services of other devices. A computing device managing a wireless network typically invites these other devices to join a new or existing wireless network. Inviting another device to join a network, however, can be time intensive because inviting another device involves scanning different channels of the wireless medium (i.e., going off-channel) and transmitting invitation frames to the other device.
A computing device managing a wireless network that includes different generations of wireless devices (e.g., legacy devices), however, may not be able to go off-channel due to communication timing constraints. Earlier generations of wireless devices may support limited types or revisions of communication protocols, some of which require almost constant in-channel communication to be maintained by a device managing the wireless network. This in-channel communication may not permit a device managing a wireless network to go off-channel for an amount of time sufficient to communicate with other devices. As such, a computing device managing a wireless network that includes a legacy device may be prevented from inviting other devices to join the wireless network.